Tongue plates that latch into buckles for securing a seat belt about an occupant of a vehicle seat are usually made from a stamped metal plate having an elongate, laterally extending opening in a wide portion of a plate body for the seat belt webbing. There is also a narrower, centrally projecting portion of the tongue plate body that has an opening for being latched in the buckle. In many seat belt systems, the tongue plate typically is positioned between the side trim of the vehicle and the outboard side of the vehicle seat when in the unlatched or stowed condition. In some recent model vehicles there has been a gradual reduction in the amount of space between the side of the vehicle seat and the side trim of the vehicle interior. Accordingly, when the vehicle is undergoing rough ride conditions, the tongue plate is more likely to shake and vibrate on the belt webbing and engage against the hard side trim panel in the vehicle interior generating undesirable noise in the vehicle compartment.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,837,519 to Moskalik et al. is directed to a construction for a tongue or latch plate for sound reduction. In the '519 patent, a latch plate has a coating of hard plastic material over molded onto the plate. Thereafter, while the hard plastic is warm, a soft plastic is over molded onto the warm, hard plastic material on the plate. While providing noise reduction, over molding two coatings of plastic material onto the latch plate undesirably increases manufacturing costs for the latch plate. In this regard, two insert molds need to be employed into which the operator has to manually load the part onto which the over mold is to be applied. So in the latch plate disclosed by the '519 patent, there is a first insert mold in which the operator places the plate body for having the hard plastic over molded thereon. Thereafter, with the hard plastic still warm, the operator removes the plate body with the warm over mold of hard plastic, and places it in the next insert mold. This insert mold is then cycled for over molding the soft plastic material onto the warm, hard plastic material. As is apparent, the two insert molds require significant operator intervention for generating the over molded latch plate of the '519 patent.
Accordingly, there is a need for an anti-rattle tongue plate with a more efficient construction. More particularly, an anti-rattle tongue plate that provides manufacturing and attendant cost efficiencies would be desirable.